Rolling Jazz Thread 2021

RIP, Phil Schaap. It was always reassuring to see you at Dizzy’s, either inside the club or outside hawking your wares.

Haha, looking forward to hearing Pat Metheny explain how guitar is hard for him.

Not enough hours in the day to practice iirc

https://www.cp24.com/entertainment-news/royal-conservatory-of-music-renames-school-after-jazz-legend-oscar-peterson-1.5579087

Cool

NY Time excited about grandson musician Adam O’Farrill

If you pay close enough attention to jazz, Adam O’Farrill might have landed on your radar about a decade ago, when he was still an adolescent. His last name is immediately recognizable — his father and grandfather are Latin jazz royalty — but he stood apart even then, mostly by hanging back and letting his trumpet speak for itself.

Since his teens, O’Farrill has prioritized restraint, so that his huge range of inspirations — Olivier Messiaen’s compositions, Miles Davis’s 1970s work, the films of Alfonso Cuarón, the novels of D.H. Lawrence, the contemporary American-Swedish composer Kali Malone — could emulsify into something personal, and devilishly tough to pin down.

NY Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/09/arts/music/adam-ofarrill-stranger-days.html

Cool. Saw his brother Zach the other day.

Zach is in his band I see.

a Jazz Times article headline from 2019 said:
Adam O’Farrill Does Not Play Latin Jazz

Yeah they play together a lot. A friend of mine plays with them sometimes.

Pianist Christopher Parker To Release Soul Food CD Oct 29 via Mahakala Music, Ft. William Parker, Daniel Carter, Jamie Branch, Kelley Hurt & Gerald Cleaver

ABOUT THE ALBUM

This is the sound of an artist becoming what he is, manifesting what was inside him for a very long time. Of course, Christopher Parker is no newcomer to music. First mentored by pianist Charles Thomas (whose 1996 album The Finishing Touch! was recorded with Ron Carter and Billy Higgins), Parker has played piano and organ for over three decades in Little Rock, Memphis, New York, and now Little Rock again. But lately, all the musical choices he makes have been distilled down to what resonates on the most personal of levels. “The ideal is to mature and age in a way where you're ripening, rather than decaying,” he laughs, and that's at the heart of his debut album, Soul Food.

Parker has worked the genre known as free jazz for most of his musical life, or at least since the 1990's, when he bucked the conventions of music school at the University of Memphis (which features a long list of legendary jazz alums) by playing with the likes of Frank Lowe and George Cartwright. That was also when he met his wife-to-be, Kelley Hurt, a true artistic partner, whose voice, reminiscent of Jeanne Lee, graces this album with everything from whispers to wails.

In the years after, Parker kept playing, studying and teaching jazz, often with Hurt, and gained some local renown, but nearly five years ago a sea change came about: The couple was commissioned to write music celebrating the Little Rock Nine, heroic high school students who defied local segregationists in 1957, resulting in their No Tears Suite in 2017. That quickly led to the decidedly less-arranged free jazz outfit Dopolarians, where the couple joined Chad Fowler (Parker's old friend) and Kidd Jordan on saxophones, William Parker on bass, and the late, great Alvin Fielder on drums.

Suddenly, the floodgates of in-the-moment creativity within Parker opened like never before, as new projects for Fowler's Mahakala Music label followed in quick succession. In one lightning bolt of a week in New York, he and Hurt recorded both Nothing But Love, a tribute to Frank Lowe, and enough tracks for both Parker's debut, Soul Food, and its as-yet-unreleased follow up.

For Parker, a longtime gigging musician, something inside was stirred. “It was starting to happen when the Dopolarians recorded,” he says, “but I was still getting my mind together at that point. Then about a year later, the Dopolarians played in Memphis, and something clicked in my head, like I'd been waiting for years for it to happen. Soon after that, the world stopped because of a pandemic; I had time to think. And I said, 'Maybe your job on earth is not to play every week at local bars. Maybe that's not your ultimate purpose. You certainly did your time with it, but when are you gonna get down and make an artistic statement and just go there? Quit tiptoeing around it and BE IT.'”

For Parker, Soul Food is the most perfect statement of that impulse, precisely because it is the most personal. As Parker notes, “Kelley and I were friends with Art Jenkins, who sang with Sun Ra. And he used to tell us, 'When you make music, it comes from your inner spirit. People don't have any choice. They have an inner spirit too, and their inner spirit is going to recognize your inner spirit.' It's a moth to a flame kind of thing. It's gonna get a reaction, because your inner spirit is gonna speak to their inner spirit, and it's beyond the surface ego plane.” With those words to guide him, he pieced together the ensemble for Soul Food.

An ego-less approach brought spontaneity and flexibility to the sessions. “I picked the players I did on purpose. The first day was just me, Daniel Carter (winds), William Parker (bass, shakuhachi flute) and Gerald Cleaver (drums), and Kelley. It was a quartet with some vocals. We literally sat down and just started playing. No chord charts, nonothing. Daniel, for instance, only wants to improvise. When I realized that, I said, 'Okay, I 'm not going to be in charge of anything. I picked great musicians, so what do I look like telling them what to do, anyway?'

“Meanwhile, there was a Vision Festival going on in New York at the time, during which we ran into this woman, Jaimie Branch, and we just started hanging out together, not knowing who she was. Then it turns out she's this trumpet player who's on the gig we're going to see! So we asked her to play on the record and she came the second day. And those tracks make up Soul Food.”

The absolute freedom with which they play, accentuated by Hurt's intimate vocals, redefines freedom itself. This is not the freedom of chaos, but a freedom from within.Summing up, Parker reflects, “In the last three or four years, my music has been transforming into something more personal and meaningful. 'I'm gonna make this music with purpose.' Or, as Alvin Fielder used to say 'Buck naked.' We're going out buck naked. I'm not putting up a front. It's just me. And that's really hard to do. You have to avoid narcissism. And if you really tap into that inner spirit, you will affect people when they hear you play.”

https://soundcloud.com/user-751795786/morning-ritual/s-Y5q82URMUkC

https://soundcloud.com/user-751795786/guardian-angels/s-h4gOjldgVTR

Did yall catch Fresh Air's coverage of the Lee Morgan box? Oh shit, may have to give it up for this---ace comments & choice of excerpts by Kevin Whitehead---stream/download:
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/04/1043051663/trumpeter-lee-morgan-channels-coltranes-splashy-style-in-live-at-the-lighthouse

The two sample tracks from the Christopher Parker are cool - "Morning Ritual" more spacious and conversational, rich in timbral range; "Guardian Angel" more intense and frenetic.

I don't know how I heard about this record, but has anyone heard it? Sounds lovely to me.

https://danielcarternyc.bandcamp.com/album/friendship-lucid-shared-dreams-and-time-travel

That's great, the acoustic guitar/horn duet combo is really nice

Yeah, I bought it and am listening now, and some other pieces with flute are also really lovely. Feels very intimate and warm, great record imho!

Oh yeah, that's nice.

Nice loose sense of dialogue and play; pleasing timbres

I also was rather pleasantly surprised by this record, a recent one from Astral Spirits— Shocron's piano playing is particularly multi-faceted and wonderful. https://astraleltemplo.bandcamp.com/album/el-templo

Stay tuned... pic.twitter.com/yIf8wjQt6s

— Blue Note Records (@bluenoterecords) October 6, 2021

This looks promising, anyone know more about what this will be?

I've emailed the label publicist. I hope it's a box of all 5 of his albums for the label (The Empty Foxhole, Love Call, New York Is Now, and the two Golden Circle live albums), with all the bonus tracks. That would be great - The Empty Foxhole has been out of print forever.

Yeah, that would be fantastic.

They're not announcing it until the release date is confirmed, but apparently it's a box set in their Tone Poet vinyl reissue series - it'll be all of the aforementioned albums in their vinyl configurations (so, no bonus tracks), plus Jackie McLean's Old & New Gospel (with Ornette as sideman).

Oh, excitement sufficiently dimmed, but thanks for finding out. Be nice if it was a CD box as well.

It is going to cost an arm-and-leg too, based on their "Tone Poet" pricing

Exactly why I'd like a CD box. Nothing against vinyl and it's cool they are getting it out there, but I just don't have time of money for these prohibitively expensive vinyl reissues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWOKFEUAzOE

Haven’t even clicked yet, but love that picture of Jorge.

I'm halfway through that Monk bio, and investigating Guy Warren (drummer from Ghana who made crossover jazz records in the U.S.) and Ahmed Abdul-Malik (bassist/oudist who experiment a lot with middle eastern/north African influences) from their mentions.

Those Ahmed Abdul-Malik albums are pretty interesting. There's a British out-jazz group named [Ahmed] in tribute to him that have done some cool shit in recent years.

https://astralahmed.bandcamp.com/

the [ Ahmed ] record from earlier this year is in my top 5 of the year for sure, it's a wild record.

Bought the Ackerley/Carter.

The Other Minds festival (With Tyshawn Sorey, Roscoe Mitchell, Anthony Braxton, and William Parker in SF is streaming:

https://www.otherminds.org/festivals/

New Rova on ESP:
The Circumference of Reason includes six tracks composed or, in the case of the piece "NC17," designed between 2011 and 2016. Then – in typical ROVA fashion – the pieces were worked over and performed by the quartet in rehearsals and concerts until perceived to be ready for recording. They include an arrangement of a Glenn Spearman piece as well as a piece by Steve Adams dedicated to Glenn; the playing on both inspired by that expressive saxophonist’s spirited personality and playing.
As well, this recording features two distinctly different versions of NC17, another in the series of ROVA’s structured-improvisations, all of which have been designed using an ever-expanding set of visual and aural cues that the quartet has invented, or borrowed and adapted. On its face, "NC17" is simply a specific set of conceptual options to cue in, in any order, and to then explore, populating the spontaneously chosen series of cued events with immersive music/sounds/energies etc.(sic)
Released October 15, 2021

Bruce Ackley – soprano and tenor saxophones
Steve Adams – alto and sopranino saxophones
Larry Ochs – tenor sax
Jon Raskin – baritone sax

“ROVA's provocative, resolutely avant-garde music draws on influences as disparate as John Coltrane and Iannis Xenakis, Anthony Braxton and Olivier Messiaen.”—Chamber Music
https://rovaesp.bandcamp.com/

Oh wow, I didn't keep up with them but I remember I used to love them. Saw them live in Buffalo in another life and they were great.

My latest Stereogum column is up. I talk about a whole bunch of versions of "A Love Supreme" including the original, of course, the two live versions, Alice Coltrane's take, Branford Marsalis's three versions, the Carlos Santana/John McLaughlin version, and more, plus a bunch of new albums, all of which rule.

hey, great column. going to pick up that Cookers record!

also, not trying to be a dick, but the Mazzarella trio record isn't out until Friday (I know because I tried to download it and only got the sample :-( ), and the Artifacts record is on Astral Spirits, not International Anthem.

Yeah, I sent in a correction about the label thing already. I said "out now" about the other one because I was expecting them to post the column on Friday, but I have no control over that.

Cool. I anticipate your columns a lot, thanks for this one.

Can’t read properly now but your article looks great, thanks! And I love me some Cookers, looking forward to that one.

Yeah thirding the love for the Cookers!

Wait a sec, how did my most anticipated jazz album of the year - Kinfolk 2: See the Birds by Nate Smith - come out a month ago and I had no idea?

Incidentally I really enjoyed this interview with him -- good stuff about Brian Blade, how he was initially going to turn down the Vulfpeck dudes, how he accidentally produced a song for Michael Jackson in the late '90s, etc
http://www.third-story.com/listen/natesmith

I interviewed him too, for a story in the new issue of DownBeat. Interesting dude. (And a really good album.)

apparently there is some more lost "legendary" Haasan ibn Ali recordings coming out, some solo material this time.

I love the new James Brandon Lewis album.

Still need to listen to xpost the new Rova, and now I notice they've got quite a few on here, going back to '89: https://rovasaxophonequartet.bandcamp.com/ Looking fwd to new Cookers also, thx unperson

Ok the Nate Smith album is pretty great, but I could do without most the vocal features, even though Stokley and Brittany Howard are fantastic obv. Obviously it was better to experience these tunes live, and the core band has enough going on to stand on their own.

Now listening to the new Matt Wilson Quartet album "Hug!" and really digging it. Always appreciate his sense of humor, there's more than enough serious jazz to go around (ok 'Space Force March/Interplanetary Music' goes over the line into schtick).

Love Matt Wilson! Saw him recently at Birdland, where I am considering going tonight, as a matter of fact

Another appealing description of new Trane, up close and in this whole era of his music: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/a-newly-released-live-recording-of-john-coltranes-a-love-supre

Third Eye TV, the project I've been working on these past few months, has just launched. I've been exploring the jazz, improvised and experimental archive of the Third Eye, Glasgow's pioneering arts centre of the 70s and 80s, and commissioning responses to it from contemporary Glasgow associated artists including Tony Bevan, Fritz Welch, Helena Celle, Richard Youngs, Semay Wu, Caroline McKenzie and more.

Tonight we're premiering a previously unseen video of John Tchicai, Danny Thompson & John Stevens from 1976, plus archive video of Derek Bailey, Julius Eastman and Glasgow skronk outfit the Andy Law Project. Plus interviews with Danny Thompson and Tchicai biographer Margriet Naber.

Watch it all here: https://www.cca-glasgow.com/programme/third-eye-tv

The Wire has a preview of two tracks from next weekend's shows: https://www.thewire.co.uk/audio/tracks/richard-youngs-helena-celle-reinterpret-third-eye-centre-performances